


bad girls-demo version

by airnomadenthusiast



Series: the donnaverse [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, First Dates, Trans Mai, they're in lesbians your honor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29135163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airnomadenthusiast/pseuds/airnomadenthusiast
Summary: “You just called me babe.”“I did.”“I liked it.”“Did you?”“I liked it a lot.”“Well, babe, I suppose I’ll have to use pet names more often.”“I guess you will, sweetheart.”Mai’s face went bright red, and Ty Lee giggled. Now this was a date.or, Ty Lee's first date with Mai is not everything she imagined it would be. It's better.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Series: the donnaverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891846
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28
Collections: Winter ATLA Femslash Week 2021





	bad girls-demo version

**Author's Note:**

> back with another installment of the donnaverse! as I was writing the last one I got curious about Mai and Ty Lee's first date was like, so I decided to write about theirs too. you don't necessarily have to read bad girls and you def don't have to read love will always find you to get what's happening here. basically, Ty Lee and Mai, along with Azula, Katara, Yue, and Suki, are in a band together, and Toph is their manager. fic starts right after the events of bad girls.
> 
> also this is for the kisses prompt for winter atla femslash week!

The song ended, and Ty Lee beamed as she saw Toph furiously applauding in the audience. The other contestants gave them halfhearted, grudging applause. Azula smiled satisfactorily, and Ty Lee knew that they had won. 

She grinned at Mai, and Mai grinned back. This was the best day ever.

Poppy Beifong cleared her throat. “Well, that was certainly… adequate.” 

Hama rolled her eyes. “Adequate? It was the best thing we’ve seen all day!” 

“I say we give them the gig,” Ms. Wu said. “Hama’s right, they’re easily the most talented group we’ve seen today.” 

Poppy sighed and looked over at Toph. “I suppose you’re right.” She smiled at them. “Congratulations, girls. Starting next Thursday, Kyoshi will be a regular act at the Beifong Club.” 

“Yes!” Ty Lee yelled. One step closer to becoming a worldwide sensation and having a sports drink named after her. 

Katara pulled her into a hug, and soon she was squishing and being squished by all of her best friends in the world in a group hug. She felt a soft hand clasp around hers in all the chaos.  _ Mai.  _ She squeezed the hand, and the hand squeezed back. 

“Now, girls,” Poppy said. “I hope you know that this means that you will be conducting yourself in a manner befitting the Beifong Club, and that—” 

“I’ll keep them in line, Mom,” Toph said, getting her white cane to meet them at the bottom of the stage. “I’m guessing you have contracts for them to sign?” 

Poppy sighed. “You know me too well.” 

Azula bristled. “I’ll need my lawyer to look it over before I sign anything.” 

“Well, you’ll need to sign it to be able to perform, so I suggest you have your lawyer work quickly,” Poppy said, frowning. “You start next Thursday.” 

Azula crossed her arms. “All right, then.” 

Mai sidled up to Ty Lee, and Ty Lee held back the sigh of a lovesick damsel. She was so beautiful. The all-black monochrome outfit made her look like a badass, and her hair looked shiny and soft, and all Ty Lee wanted to do was run her fingers through it and kiss her until their lips were sore. 

She smiled. She could do that now. 

“Hey, so I was thinking.” Mai tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and this time Ty Lee did sigh, because it was so adorable seeing Mai nervous, and nervous because of  _ her,  _ no less. “We should go on a date right now.” 

Ty Lee frowned. “Right now?” 

“Yeah, we could go get some of that sushi you like? The restaurant’s not far from here.” 

Ty Lee shook her head. “Absolutely not.” 

Mai’s face blanched. “Oh, I just, um—I thought—I’m so sorry, I must have misread—” 

“No, no, of course I want to go on a date with you, silly, it’s just—we go get sushi all the time.” 

Mai frowned. “Yeah, because you like it.” 

“I  _ love  _ it, but don’t you think our first date should be something that we don’t do every day? And that one of us should ask the other,  _ properly?”  _

Mai narrowed her eyes. “Did you and Suki watch  _ Pride and Prejudice  _ again?”

“It’s a great movie!”

“First of all, any Mr. Darcy that is not Colin Firth is completely useless, second of all, we’re not white cishets in Regency-era England, we can go on a casual sushi date.” 

_ “Or,  _ we could go on a completely un-casual, amazing first date that we’ll remember forever.” Ty Lee pouted, knowing that Mai did whatever she wanted when she did. (Seriously, how did she not figure out that Mai was in love with her before?) “Please? I really want the beginning of our relationship to be special. I’ve liked you forever and I’ve dreamed up a million scenarios for our first date and exactly none of them were ‘going for sushi like we always do.’”

Mai sighed. “Fine.” She took Ty Lee’s hand. “Ty Lee Mori, will you do me the honor of going on a date with me later today?” 

Ty Lee giggled. “It would be my pleasure.” 

Mai kissed her hand with a flourish and a wink, and Ty Lee thought she might faint. “Great, so I’ll pick you up at 7?” 

“It’s a date.” 

_________________________

Contrary to popular belief, Ty Lee did not spend all of her time on her appearance—quite the opposite, actually, she basically threw on whatever clothes she found first—but as soon as she got back to her apartment, she was scrounging up the lip gloss she’d bought two years ago and the hairspray her mother had gotten her for her nineteenth birthday, trying to put herself together. There was very little in her closet that wasn’t pink athleisure, and soon Ty Lee’s bed had a huge pile of floral patterned leggings that she  _ absolutely could not wear on a first date.  _

Didn’t she own a skirt? Or jeans? Or heaven forbid, a dress? She was starting to feel like maybe she should have kept letting her mother buy her clothes when she saw it: a black sundress with magenta flowers.  _ Perfect.  _ She looked towards the pile of leggings and found a pair of magenta ones that matched the flowers on the dress. Then she shrugged on a denim jacket and a pair of tennis shoes and looked at herself in the mirror. 

She looked… fine. Not pretty, not perfect, not absolutely gorgeous and stunning, just…  _ fine.  _

She checked her phone. Two hours still to wait until Mai picked her up. Two hours more to fuss. 

Lip gloss? She’d never liked the way it looked, and it made her lips feel sticky, but maybe Mai would like it? Should she wear her hair differently? She’d put it up every day since first grade, but looking at it now she couldn’t stand it. It looked so…  _ boring.  _ Mai wouldn’t want to date someone boring. 

She picked up a brush and started undoing her braid, wincing a little when her hair fell out of its too tightly wound hair tie. She’d been dyeing it a slightly lighter shade of brown since high school and now she couldn’t even remember  _ why.  _ In the two years since she’d known Yue, she had dyed her hair white, pink, purple, and blue, and meanwhile Ty Lee had stuck with this same boring, ugly shade of light brown for no reason at all, and now her hair was dead and frizzy and  _ awful  _ and goodness, why did Mai even like her when she  _ looked like this _ —

She stopped short. She was spiraling. She looked  _ fine.  _ Maybe she could call one of her friends to calm her nerves. Not Mai, for obvious reasons. Suki was usually good for stuff like this, but of  _ course  _ Azula had to go and tell her and Yue that they were in love with each other  _ now _ , instead of later when Ty Lee didn’t need someone to tell her that she wasn’t completely horrifying. And much as she loved Azula, she was terrible at reassurance. So that left… Katara. 

Shit. 

Ty Lee loved Katara with every bone in her body, the same way she loved all of her friends, but they didn’t really have a lot in common. Katara was fierce, self-assured, smart as a whip, and one of the most compassionate people on the planet. And Ty Lee… could be all of those things, but even on her best days, she wasn’t Katara. The few times they’d hung out one on one had been fun, but there were lulls in the conversation that normally would have been filled by Suki or Mai. Ty Lee wasn’t sure if it was the Scorpio Mars in Katara’s chart or just her own insecurity, but she’d never wanted to vent to Katara, or seem anything less than bubbly and positive in front of her. What would Katara think of her then? 

She sighed and stared at the mess that was her hair. She had to call somebody. 

Katara picked up after the first ring. “Ty Lee?” 

“Hey, Katara, how are you?” 

“Great, actually. I told Aang what happened at the Beifong Club and he got super excited, and now they’re trying to make us dinner to celebrate.” 

Ty Lee winced. She didn’t know Aang all that well, but she did know that while they were talented at a great many things, cooking was not one of them. Plus, he was a vegetarian, and Katara very much was not, and Ty Lee was certain that wouldn’t go over well. 

“He’s not making anything too complicated, is he?” 

Katara laughed. “It’s something he found on vegetarian TikTok, and I feel like any recipe you can cram down into a minute or less can’t be that hard. Worst comes to worst, we’ll get takeout. How are you doing? Oh, how’s  _ Mai?  _ Is she there with you? Hi Mai!” 

Ty Lee gulped. “Actually, she’s not here.” She sighed. “Okay, so, basically I’ve been in love with Mai since we were kids, right? And now we’ve kissed, we’ve said I love you, romantically, and so then after the show she was like ‘hey, let’s go out for sushi for our first date’, and I, like a  _ total idiot,  _ was like ‘no, I want our first date to be  _ special,’  _ so now she’s off planning something magical probably and I’m in my apartment and my hair looks so awful and boring and I only had one outfit that was even kind of date appropriate but it’s not even that nice-looking and I’m so nervous I feel like I’m going to puke and—” 

“Ty Lee. Ty Lee.” 

“What?” 

“Breathe.” 

Ty Lee stopped and took a deep breath. “Now what?” 

“Now, you’re going to listen to me, okay? This same exact thing happened with me and Aang.” 

Ty Lee frowned. “It did?” They seemed so casual and easy with each other that she couldn’t picture either one of them having the mental breakdown that she was currently having. 

“Oh, totally. Well, okay, slightly different, because they had known they liked me for way longer than I knew I liked them, but once I knew I was into them I started getting so anxious around them. And I thought it would go away once we started dating, but instead it just got worse.” 

“So what did you do?” 

“Well, I freaked out and spent hours and hours trying to decide what to wear every time we hung out, and it’s not like he was any better—did I tell you about the time we went bowling and he showed up in a suit?”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not! It was  _ bizarre.  _ Like, an actual  _ suit.  _ But as time went on, things started getting easier. I think once he came over to meet my dad and Bato, we started to relax. We had this whole long conversation about how I kind of resent Dad and Bato for moving us out of Anchorage and he started talking about how he wished his foster father had taken him to Tibet before he died, and it was the first time things had been that comfortable in a while. New relationships are always weird, and it’s always a process to figure out how to navigate it, even if you’ve been friends forever and technically all that’s changing is that you’re holding hands now.” 

“Mai and I already held hands pretty often.” 

Katara snorted. “Well, not all of us can be you, can we? Look, text me a picture of what you’re wearing, but whatever it is, you probably look amazing. Take it from a newly out bisexual, you are hot as shit, okay? And anyway, when has Mai ever been concerned with how people look? I mean, she dated  _ Zuko _ , for crying out loud.” 

“That was comphet, though.” 

“I know, but regardless, you’re a  _ major  _ step up, okay? In every way possible.” 

“Stop bullying Zuko, he’s our friend!” Ty Lee heard Aang say. 

Katara laughed. “I get to bully him as much as I want because he’s our friend.” And then she whispered, “Also because he deserves it.” 

Ty Lee giggled. “He does.” 

“Right?” 

“Thanks, Katara. Really. I really needed to hear it.” 

She heard Katara shifting. “No problem. I know we don’t talk one on one often, but I am always here for you, okay?” 

“I know,” Ty Lee said, smiling. “But still, thank you.” 

“Text me the outfit, okay? And call me when you get back from your date, I want to hear every last detail.” 

“I do too!” Aang said. 

Katara sighed. “And so does Aang.” 

Ty Lee nodded. “I will.” 

“Good luck! Not that you need it.”

“Good luck, Ty Lee,” Aang said.

Ty Lee couldn’t hold back her grin. “Thanks. I’ll call you later. Love you.” 

“Love you too!” 

She ended the call and pulled up the camera on her phone, texting a picture of her outfit to Katara. A few seconds later, Katara replied.

**KATARA**

_ What are you talking about? _

_ That’s cute!! _

_ Very you _

_ Also I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair down _

_ I like it!! _

Ty Lee ran a hand through her hair and looked at herself in the mirror again. She didn’t really see what Katara saw, but she trusted her judgment. 

She’d already checked her horoscope that day, obviously, but she decided to look at it one more time.  _ Let loose and show off your inner elegance _ , it said. 

She smiled at herself in the mirror.  _ Hair down it is.  _

_ ___________________ _

The look on Mai’s face when she opened the door made all the awfulness of that afternoon worth it. 

Ty Lee flushed looking at Mai’s expression, a mixture of shock and delight. “You look good,” she said finally, breathing heavily. 

“So do you,” Ty Lee said, blushing. She’d exchanged the all black ensemble from earlier for a mostly black, much more casual look: gray skinny jeans, black combat boots, and a black T-shirt with the words “Kill The Boy Band” emblazoned in red. She was wearing dark purple lipstick, and Ty Lee’s stomach flipped thinking about how it might look smudged with kisses. 

Mai gave her a crooked smile and held out her elbow. “Your carriage awaits, my lady.” 

Ty Lee rolled her eyes and hooked her arm in Mai’s. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” 

“Depends,” Mai said, pretending to think about it. “Would doing so impugn your virtue?” 

“Mai.” 

“What? I’m getting into character. Inferior Mr. Darcy, at your service.” 

Ty Lee laughed, and even though her stomach was still in knots, she felt slightly more at ease. Katara was right. This was Mai, the Mai who had written an entire song about her, had found her crying in a hallway and kissed her until she felt better, and was now entertaining Ty Lee’s perfect first date fantasies with a smile and a wink. They would be fine. This would all be fine. 

“Matthew Macfayden is a perfectly fine Mr. Darcy,” Ty Lee said as she got into Mai’s car. 

“Nobody beats Colin Firth,” Mai countered, putting an address in her GPS. “They should have stopped making  _ Pride and Prejudice  _ adaptations after the 1995 miniseries.” 

“What about  _ Bridget Jones’s Diary?”  _

“Okay, you got me there.” 

Ty Lee smiled. “I’m really glad we’re doing this.” 

Mai smiled back. “Me too. I think you’re really going to like what we’re doing.” 

Ty Lee still wanted Mai to just come out and tell her what they were doing, but she trusted her, so she decided to just let it go. They fell into easy conversation about the prospect of a Bridget Jones musical, which Ty Lee was cautiously excited for and Mai was absolutely against (“What is the point without Colin Firth?”) until Mai said “Here we are.” 

Ty Lee felt like she might die then and there. “We’re going  _ rollerskating?”  _

Mai beamed at her. “You’re always saying that you want to get better at it, so I thought I’d give you the opportunity.” 

Ty Lee pursed her lips. Of course Mai, being the thoughtful, attentive person that she was, would remember Ty Lee saying that on a whim a few weeks ago and assume that it was a great first date idea. And what reason would she have to take into account that Ty Lee might be feeling incredibly self-conscious and the prospect of falling on her ass for several hours wasn’t exactly going to make her feel better? 

Mai must have seen the look on her face, because she said, “We can do something else, if you want.” 

“No! No.” She couldn’t let Mai think she had done the wrong thing by being incredibly sweet. Ty Lee  _ had  _ said she wanted to get better at rollerskating. “This is perfect. Thank you.” 

Mai reached over and squeezed Ty Lee’s hand. “You can hold onto me the whole time.” 

Ty Lee grinned. “I’d like that.” 

They walked inside, hand in hand, and exchanged their combat boots and tennis shoes for skates and gear. Ty Lee tripped just as soon as she stepped onto the rink, but Mai caught her before she fell, her hands wrapping around Ty Lee’s waist. She was warm everywhere, and suddenly she thought that rollerskating might not be such a bad first date after all. 

She gripped the wall with her left hand and onto Mai with her right. “Why am I so bad at this?” she groaned. “I’m a coordinated person, this should be easy.” 

“You’re coordinated on your feet, babe,” Mai pointed out. “Skates are a totally different animal.” 

Ty Lee stopped and turned, as much as she could, as awkwardly as possible, to face Mai. Mai smiled at her, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “What?” 

“You just called me babe.” 

“I did.” 

“I liked it.” 

“Did you?” 

“I liked it a lot.” 

“Well,  _ babe,  _ I suppose I’ll have to use pet names more often.” 

“I guess you will, sweetheart.” 

Mai’s face went bright red, and Ty Lee giggled. Now  _ this  _ was a date. 

They stared at each other for a few moments more, and Mai started to lean in, when a voice behind her said, “Mai?” 

Much to Ty Lee’s dismay, Mai turned around to see who it was. “Jet, hey!” She skated over to hug him. “What are you doing here?” 

Jet sighed. “Well, fucking  _ Zuko _ thought it would be a fun idea for us to enter the pairs skating competition that’s happening tonight, but then right after I dropped way too much money on the entry fee he went and got the ‘flu.’” His eyes lit up. “Wait a minute, you’re a good skater, can you fill in? You can keep his share of the prize money if we win.” 

Mai frowned. “Oh, any other day I totally would, but since I’m on a date, I think—” 

Jet’s jaw dropped. “No fucking way!” He enveloped both of them in a hug. “Fucking  _ finally.  _ For a minute there I thought y’all might never get together. Oh!” He pulled out his phone. “Looks like I just won my bet with Zuko about y’all, score.” 

Mai groaned. “You bet on us?” 

“It was Zuko’s idea,” Jet said, typing away. “Anyways, forget I even asked, y’all have fun, I’ll just—”

“I don’t mind.” 

Ty Lee didn’t know why she said that when she very much did mind. But she knew that Jet was just as awesome of a skater as Mai was, and she didn’t want Mai to feel like she had to babysit her the whole night. 

Mai took Ty Lee’s hands. “Are you sure?”

_ No.  _ “Totally. Go have fun.” 

Ty Lee wanted Mai to say something along the lines of  _ But I was already having fun here with you,  _ but instead, Mai said, “You’re the best, babe,” and kissed her cheek quickly. 

Jet grinned. “You’re all right, Mori, you know that? Next time you get something from the Jasmine Dragon, it’s on me.” 

Ty Lee smiled halfheartedly. “Thanks, Jet.” 

Mai flashed Ty Lee one last smile before skating to the other side of the rink with Jet. Ty Lee watched them for a few moments. Mai looked so graceful skating with Jet, spinning on her heels and jumping and stepping in time to the music. And then, like a manifestation of Ty Lee’s worst nightmare, Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” started playing over the speakers. Mai burst out laughing and danced with Jet, and even though Ty Lee knew that Mai was gay and they were in love and Jet couldn’t be a threat at all, Avril asking if she could make it any more obvious didn’t exactly help Ty Lee’s self-confidence. 

_ What just happened?  _

She thought about getting off the rink momentarily to get something to eat, but she didn’t like the idea of her socks touching the grimy multicolored carpet. So she stayed on the rink, scuttling along the edge, watching her—best friend? girlfriend? both?—skate with a dude that Ty Lee normally had no problem with but who was now making her insides want to be outside. 

She didn’t know who to be angry at, Jet or Mai or stupid Zuko and his stupid flu. And even as she made the decision to blame Zuko for everything, deep down, she knew that she had done this to herself. 

Just when she was starting to feel really bad, an announcement came over the speakers. “Will everybody clear the rink for the Earth Rumble pairs skating competition?” 

At this point, Ty Lee was far from either of the exits. She tried to scuttle a little faster, but soon, she was the only person left on the rink. She could feel everybody’s eyes on her as she moved gut-wrenchingly slowly towards one of the exits, and she felt dangerously close to tears. 

“Here, honey, let me help you,” a voice behind her said, and she felt Mai’s hand grab hers. “Let go of the wall.” 

“No,” Ty Lee grumbled. 

“Come on, please? It’ll be faster.” 

“I don’t want to go faster.” 

Mai stopped then, skating around so that she was facing Ty Lee. “Is everything okay?” 

She gripped the wall, scowling. “Just peachy.” 

“Are you sure?” 

Something in Ty Lee snapped. “No, I’m not sure.” She huffed. “When I woke up this morning, I thought you were in love with somebody else, and now we’re on a date at a roller rink and I’m horrible at rollerskating and I look awful and you’re in a pairs skating competition with Jet and I can’t even get off of this stupid rink without help!” 

As soon as she said it, she regretted it, but it was too late now. Her words fell between them like stones, and when she finished the silence between them was thick and unyielding. To a stranger, Mai’s face might have looked blank, but Ty Lee, who had known Mai through thousands of fights with her parents and held her when Azula was being a toxic manipulative asshole and had kissed her that afternoon, recognized that face. It was a carefully crafted mask of apathy, designed to conceal what Mai was really feeling. 

Ty Lee had never been the cause of that face before.

She took a deep breath. “Can you—can you help me?” 

Mai nodded without comment, and she gingerly held Ty Lee’s elbow—not her hand, her elbow—as she led her off of the rink. Not even Ty Lee’s nervousness about skating that far could overcome the sinking feeling that she’d accidentally ended something before it had even begun, that a decade and a half of mutual pining was about to culminate in frosty stares and broken hearts. 

As soon as they got to the exit, Mai left without a word. Ty Lee took off her skates, not even caring about whether her socks got dirty, and sat down. She supposed she could call an Uber, but she figured that she may as well witness the pairs skating competition that was ruining her life. 

One pair after the other went, dancing to various songs. They were all fairly talented, and a lot of them seemed like they had been practicing for weeks, if not months. Ty Lee wasn’t sure how Jet and Mai were supposed to compete against these people when they’d only been rehearsing for half an hour at most. 

Finally, it was their turn, and Ty Lee, in spite of herself, cheered more loudly than anybody else. Jet flashed her a wide grin, but Mai didn’t meet her eyes. 

The telltale guitar opening of “No Scrubs” by TLC played, and Jet and Mai began skating in unison. What they lacked in choreography, they made up for in attitude, and Ty Lee found herself getting into their routine. Mai’s hair flew around her as she stepped in time to the music, and even now, Ty Lee couldn’t help noticing how it shined under the strobe lights. 

At the bridge, Mai crouched down in front of Jet, and when the chorus picked back up again, he hooked his arms under her shoulders and lifted her up. Her legs formed a wide split briefly before she landed back on her feet, and Ty Lee’s jaw dropped in shock. They finished the routine to roaring applause, and Ty Lee was on her feet, screaming with everybody else. 

“And that was our last pair—oh! Wait a minute! It seems we have a surprise entry. Please, put your hands together for Mai Okamoto and Ty Lee Mori!” 

_ What? _

Jet left the rink, and Mai grinned as she found Ty Lee’s eyes in the audience. “Put your skates on!” 

A spotlight found Ty Lee in the crowd, and she put the skates on and scurried (as much as she could scurry on eight wheels) to the rink entrance, where Mai was waiting for her. “What are you doing?” Ty Lee whispered. 

“Apologizing,” Mai said. “For my part of what went wrong today. You can go after me.” 

Ty Lee opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, she heard a vaguely familiar ‘80s synth track start to play. The beat and the guitars kicked in, along with more synths, and then there was Donna’s voice, rougher than she remembered it.  _ “You’re bad, girl. Talking ‘bout you’re sad, girl, yeah.”  _

“What is this?” Ty Lee said. “The song doesn’t sound like this.” 

Mai grinned. “This is the demo version. Yue’s played it for us a couple of times on her record player. Don’t tell anybody, but,” she leaned in to whisper in Ty Lee’s ear, and Ty Lee shivered, “I actually like this version way better than the original.” 

Ty Lee smiled. “You would.” This version was darker, more in your face. Exactly something Mai would go for. “But what does this have to do with anything?” 

“Well,” Mai said. “You wanted our first date to be special, and while I think we can both agree that it was…  _ eventful,  _ I don’t think it really reached the threshold of your perfect first date, did it?” 

Ty Lee shook her head. 

Mai took her hand. “This song—the other version of it—is very special to me. Not only because it started the band, but because I could not take my eyes off of you the entire time we were singing it. You were perfect, and I loved you so much. I always have, and I always will. So I was thinking that the original version could be for the band, and this version could be our song.”

The grin took over Ty Lee’s face. “I thought our song was the song you wrote for me.” 

“We can have one more song,” Mai said, cupping Ty Lee’s face. “We can have a whole album, if you want.” 

Ty Lee smiled and wrapped her arms around Mai’s neck. “That sounds nice.” 

Just as they were about to kiss, somebody yelled from the audience, “When is the dancing going to start? We don’t have all day!” 

And then, Jet: “They’re  _ having a moment,  _ Carl, can it!” 

Both of them burst out laughing, and then Ty Lee rested her forehead on Mai’s. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have put so much pressure on this, and I shouldn’t have asked you to read my mind. I was just really nervous, and I overreacted.” 

“You did,” Mai said. “I wish you’d told me what you were feeling earlier.”

“It won’t happen again.” 

Mai stroked her hair. “You look gorgeous, you know that? Even when you’re holding onto the railing for dear life.” 

Ty Lee giggled. “Thank you.” 

“And you weren’t the only one who was nervous,” Mai said quietly. “Part of the reason I took you here was because I wanted to impress you with my rollerskating skills.” 

Ty Lee hugged Mai closer. “Well, they are very impressive. And you look amazing doing it. But then again, you look amazing doing everything, so—” 

Mai cut Ty Lee off with a kiss, and Ty Lee smiled into it, leaning her head a little to the left. Mai smelled like vanilla and Old Spice, and her mouth against Ty Lee’s was soft and insistent. There wasn’t anywhere Ty Lee would rather be than at this roller rink, because here there was Mai, and Mai was everything to her. 

They broke apart, and Ty Lee whispered, “I love you too.”  __

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! [ this video ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Rollerskating/comments/jvhpyo/trying_out_a_tlc_no_scrubs_challenge/) was the inspo for the No Scrubs routine (although I made it pairs and added things that I don't know are technically possible? idk man Ty Lee's being bad at rollerskating was inspired by me being bad at it) also if you liked this, please check out the [ Asian Women's Shelter ](https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=aws&id=1) an organization that helps out Asian female and/or queer and/or trans victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. if you want to see more of me you can follow me on tumblr @harutheestallion


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